This course will introduce students to the theory of music, providing them with the skills needed to read and write Western music notation, as well as to understand, analyse, and listen informedly. It will cover material such as pitches and scales, intervals, clefs, rhythm, form, meter, phrases and cadences, and basic harmony.
This course covers the fundamentals of Western music theory, from the absolute basics to some more advanced concepts and, as such, is the perfect course for beginners and more experienced musicians alike.
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Unterrichtet von

Dr Michael Edwards

Dr Zack Moir

Teaching Fellow

Richard Worth

Dr Nikki Moran

Dr John Philip Kitchen, MA BMus PhD FRCO LRAM

Eli Appleby-Donald

Skript

So we've had practice already, earlier on building triads on all the degrees of the major and minor scale. But now we know that we that we don't have to build chords with just three notes in them. We now know about four-note chords, so what we wanted to do was just spend a bit of time building four-note chords up from the triad. Missing out every other note but continuing on. So we got the first on we missed out on one we've got another one we miss that one, we've got another one, we miss that one. And then put another one in as well. We're going to do that for every scale degree and see what quality of chords emerge when we do that. >> So we start on a major key, first of all. And again, we're going to use C - just because it's a nice easy one to show on the piano. [MUSIC] So as Nikki said, we've got the 1st degree, 3rd degree, 5th degree, and the 7th degree. And actually what we is we've got the major triad that we're familiar with, [SOUND] but we've also got the interval of a major 7th from the root to the 7th. The major triad with the major 7th is a major 7th chord. [MUSIC] Okay, the chord on, the chord built on the 2nd degree is minor triad with a minor 7th we're going to call that a minor 7th chord that's the same for chord C we've got a minor 7th chord. [MUSIC] Chord 4, we have a major 7th chord. So we got a major triad with F to E in this case which is a major 7th on the outside. So it's a major triad with a major 7th, so major 7th chord. Then we got a major triad, but this time we've got a major triad with a minor 7th. And this is called a dominant 7th chord. It goes down to the 7th chord because it's, it's a 4th-note chord built up from chord 5 from the dominant and it's the one that you recognize. It's the dominant 7th chord and it's got important features in it. It's got a three, a four that wants to move to a 3 and a 7 that wants to move to a 1. The reason that it's got that going on is because that's where the semitones fall and you'll remember that. So, [SOUND] we want it wants to resolve - it wants to take us back to tonic and that's what distinguishes it. [SOUND]. >> Okay, so that's chord five and remember we talked about that having a very important function. Moving onto six, we've got a minor triad, again with a minor 7th. We now know that this is a minor 7th chord. And then if we move to chord 7, we said that that was a diminished triad and it is but actually when we add the 7th on we have minor 7th between the root and the 7th. So diminished triad with a minor 7th is what's known as a half diminished chord. So, let's just reiterate that. On chord one, we've got major 7th. Chord two, we've got minor 7th. Chord three, we've got minor 7th. Chord four, we've got major 7th. Chord five, we've got that all important dominant 7th. Chord six, we've got our minor 7th. And chord seven is a half diminished chord. We've included some supplementary material that not only explains this, but also shows you some chord symbols that are used particularly in pop music and jazz. >> All right, that was the major scale, that was building 7th chords on every single degree of the major scale. So now you know what we're going to do, we're going to do the same thing again but building 7th chords on every degree of the harmonic minor scale. We'll use A minor. >> Okay, so if we look at this, we know we've got a minor triad. Actually, if we use a harmonic minor, we've got a major seven, so we're going to call this a minor major 7th. Okay, moving on, we've got half diminished chord, so that a minor triad with. Sorry that's our diminished triads with a minor 7th. That's half diminished. Moving on, we've got that nice augmented sound that we got when we built the triad on chord three, but this time we got a major 7th with it. So this is an augmented major 7th. [MUSIC] Chord four. We get our minor triad with a minor 7th, so it's a minor 7th chord. Chord five, we've got a major triad with a minor 7th. We've spoken about this as being our dominant 7th chord. >> So, as in the major scale, [SOUND] we've got that same pattern of intervals which contains in it. Those two important pulls, it got a seven that wants to move to a one. And its got a four that wants to move to a three, as well as thinking about it in its key context. So, here I've got this chord chord five with a 7th on it and it wants to move to this chord one. When it does that, it's got a pull. Or it's got this pull. It wants to resolve in that fashion. >> This is really important. This is why dominant's so important within the key. So it's called five dominant 7th. moving to chord 6th. We've got a major triad with a major 7th, so we get a major 7th chord. [MUSIC] And then we've got a diminished triad, but with a diminished 7th and this is called diminished 7th chord. Okay, so let's just reiterate that. If we go back to chord one, [SOUND] we've got a minor major seventh. Chord two, [SOUND] half diminished. Chord three, [SOUND] augmented major seventh. Chord four, [SOUND] minor seventh. Chord five, dominant 7th. Chord six, major 7th. And chord seven is our diminished 7th chord. >> So, let's sum up. Back in lecture 2, you heard how a given scale can lead our ears to hear one note after the whole scale as being the most important or defining note as being the key note. In this lecture, we've seen how a similar perceptual effect can happen with groups of notes with, with triads and with chords. >> So we started off by looking at triads and looking at how the notes work together to give us quality. So we said things like the chord was major. Or minor, or augmented, or diminish. And then we took that one step further by adding another degree, we added the seventh, so its a four-note chord. And we looked at the qualities that we got from these chords. >> So finally, what we're seeing in this lecture is how the putting together those courts can give us a really important and very strong structural effect. How the harmonic structures that arise, from especially chords like the tonic, the dominant, and the sub dominant had these, really commonly used together. To create overall structures, that reinforce our sense of key, that reinforce our sense of, of, of tonality, of tonal center. And we've seen how other chords can be used to, to elaborate and and extend that harmonic structural experience. >> So, just remember to have a look at the supplementary material that is on this lecture's webpage. In the next lecture, what you're going to go on to do is look more at chords within keys and how they actually work together. [BLANK_AUDIO]